> It doesn't appear that you've ever read anything about the history of science.

On the contrary, I know this historical period, and this experiment, very well -- certainly better than you do.

> When some physics experiment comes out, "every living physicist" doesn't immediately know "exactly what that result meant."

I never said what you claim -- you have above invented a quote to argue with. As to what I did say, over time, of course they do, and it was certainly true about Michelson-Morley. The result caused an effort to, as was said at the time, "save the ether", an effort that extended from 1887 to the time of Special Relativity, which is what resolved the crisis. Details here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether

> It not nearly as rational and positivist as you would think.

That is exactly what it was, and I just showed this by providing a link to a detailed history. I recommend that you read the history before pontificating about it.

> Science is a human activity.

Yes -- it's how we deal with human foibles, with our tendency to believe things for which there is no evidence. As you have just done with the content of my post, which doesn't have the words in it that you falsely claim to be present.

> You claim there have never been "central, unifying, falsifiable" theories that are "amenable to practical test" that have the potential to fail.

And? Prove me wrong. There is no central, unifying, testable, falsifiable theory in psychology, that would be to psychology what the Standard Model is to physics -- something that unifies all theoretical and experimental work as well as practice.

When a bridge or airplane is built, it must conform to physical theory or the designer is likely to be prosecuted or expelled from the field. The reason? There is such a theory, it is very reliable, and it informs all research and practice -- from theoretical work to engineering.

Prove that this exists for psychology. Prove that recovered memory practitioners, or facilitated communications practitioners, or those who offered treatment for the now-abandoned "disease" called Asperger's, were prosecuted because their activities failed to conform to the accepted, unifying psychological theory that is to psychology what physical theory is to physics and biological theory is to biology.

> I guess you've never heard of behaviorism or cognitive psychology.

I guess you don't realize that these subfields don't have testable, falsifiable theories, and they certainly don't possess a theory that unifies the entire field as physics and biology theories do.

> Evolutionary theory and computational models are also important components of psychological research.

Yes, but these aren't scientific theories -- they lack the properties of testability and falsifiability.

If psychology were to acquire a central, unifying theory, the defining trait of all legitimate sciences, clinicians would have to conform to it, something that is spectacularly false right now, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. As thing stand, clinicians can do whatever they please -- they can invent new diseases (Asperger's, recovered memory therapy and facilitated communications are recent examples) that exist until public outrage requires their abandonment. Imagine if doctors had the "freedom" that psychologists have -- it would challenge the scientific standing of medicine.

It certainly challenges the scientific standing of psychology, to the degree that the present director of the NIMH has recently diplomatically called for the wholesale replacement of psychological methods with neuroscience:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=faulty-circ...

A quote: "In most areas of medicine, doctors have historically tried to glean something about the underlying cause of a patient’s illness before figuring out a treatment that addresses the source of the problem. When it came to mental or behavioral disorders in the past, however, no physical cause was detectable so the problem was long assumed by doctors to be solely “mental,” and psychological therapies followed suit. Today scientific approaches based on modern biology, neuroscience and genomics are replacing nearly a century of purely psychological theories, yielding new approaches to the treatment of mental illnesses."

> And you should read a basic primer in psychology.

Do I need to read a basic primer on astrology before describing it as pseudoscience? No, not really -- to accurately identify it as pseudoscience doesn't require that level of familiarity. All one need do is read its history, read its longstanding contempt for scientific and experimental discipline. You did notice, didn't you, that this is the exact point made by the linked article? The article in which the Nobel Prizewinner says, "Your field is now the poster child for doubts about the integrity of psychological research… I believe that you should collectively do something about this mess."

Or didn't you get the memo?